1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a transparent conductive material and a transparent conductive member.
2. Related Background Art
Transparent electrodes are used in LCDs, PDPs, organic EL displays, touch panels, etc. and transparent conductive members are used as the transparent electrodes. The transparent conductive members are made of transparent conductive oxide materials, and it is conventionally known that such transparent conductive oxide materials include metal oxides such as tin oxide, indium-tin complex oxide, indium oxide, zinc oxide, and zinc-antimony complex oxide.
These transparent conductive member are normally made in a film form by sputtering and, however, they have some problems: e.g., equipment is expensive; efficiency of film formation is low; the film is easy to crack, and so on. On the other hand, there are also studies on the transparent conductive members based on complex structure of conductive powder made of the aforementioned transparent conductive oxide materials, with resin or the like, and the complex transparent conductive members are characterized by excellent flexibility and crack-resistant structure.
However, if the complex transparent conductive members are used in a high humidity environment, the complex transparent conductive members will gradually absorb water to increase the electric resistance of the transparent conductive members themselves, and tend to increase temporal change of the electric resistance.
For this reason, if the transparent conductive members are used, for example, in a touch panel or the like and kept in a high humidity environment, the operation of the touch panel could become unstable little by little.
There are thus desires for a transparent conductive material capable of suppressing the increase and temporal change of electric resistance due to absorption of water. For example, optically transparent conductive materials proposed heretofore include those using a phenoxy resin believed to have low moisture absorption, or a mixed resin of the phenoxy resin with an epoxy resin, or polyvinylidene fluoride as a resin for fixing the conductive powder (see e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 08-78164 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-273874 below).